Kong: Skull Island (2017)

Director: Jordan Vogt-Roberts

Cast: Tom Hiddleston, Samuel L. Jackson, John Goodman, Brie Larson

Have I Seen it Before: Nope. It was just one of those movies during a year where I was eyeball deep in the first season of The Fourth Wall. Never got back around to it, and when I found Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019) kind of underwhelming, I didn’t get in much of a hurry.

But now, as there is a better than even chance that my first movie back in the theater will be Godzilla vs. Kong (2021), felt like I should at least try to get acclimated.

Did I Like It: Tragically, I’ve been down on fiction films as a general rule lately, so it felt as I started this one that I was going to continue my resolute ambivalence. But, ultimately, I found myself kind of enjoying the proceedings in a low-impact, lazy weekend afternoon sort of way. Everyone involved has done better work elsewhere, but that’s hardly a complaint. Many films can feature John Goodman, but not every film can be Matinee (1993).

The time the film is set in—the 1970s, just as the Vietnam War is ending and the Watergate scandal is heating up—give it an undercurrent of political commentary that consistently threatens to either weigh down the proceedings or become trite, and it is surely to the film’s credit that it never fully surrenders to the temptation. The film’s secret weapon, however is John C. Reilly. His performance as Hank Marlow gives the film a rationale for an enlightened sensibility, and provides its comic relief. One might think that the film is a bit too measured in the pleasures it offers, but it’s hard to knock a film that gets the mixture right. It may want to be a bit of Apocalypse Now (1979), but it knows that people are really here for the giant ape getting into fights.

I just hope the man lived to see 2016. Go Cubbies.

I don’t know if the latest entry in the Monsterverse canon will be my first trip back to the theater post-vaccination, but if I do, I’m reasonably sure I’m Team Kong all the way, if only because I enjoyed their most recent film far more than the other. That’s a reasonable basis to pick sides in a fight, right?

Thor: Ragnarok (2017)

Director: Taika Waititi

Cast: Chris Hemsworth, Tom Hiddleston, Cate Blanchett, Mark Ruffalo

Have I Seen it Before: Absolutely.

Did I Like It: Man, there’s not really a weak entry in Marvel’s fabled phase three, is there?

There was a sense, immediately from the first scenes of J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek (2009) that Chris Hemsworth is a movie star. That it took this long for Hollywood to get the fact that he’s a big goofball is a shame. We could have gotten a lot more movies like this. There’s bits of it in the original Thor (2011) has a little bit of this sensibility, but tragically Thor: The Dark World (2013) is content to be as dour as possible.

Such is not the case with this third—and let us not hope final—entry in the Thor series, the weight has been lifted and Hemsworth is allowed to be his most true screen persona. It’s a buddy comedy movie. Not only that, it is a triple-threat buddy comedy movie as Hemsworth easily pairs with no fewer than three straight people in the forms of Loki (Hiddleston), Hulk/Banner (Ruffalo), and Valkyrie (Tessa Thompson). In more than a few of those cases, Hemsworth is able to switch gears and be the straight man himself in those pair offs.

It’s also a wildly imaginative Space Opera that feels fresh even when my intellect tells me there was a studio note to make the latest Thor movie more like those Guardians of the Galaxy movies. It may also be the most incisive documentary about the true nature of Jeff Goldblum that we’re likely to get.

One might be willing to complain that this doesn’t feel like the third part of Thor’s story as presented in the previous films. His romance with Jane Foster (Natalie Portman) is offered no more than a quick line of dialogue about how they broke up, but when the movie is this good, I’m relatively certain we shouldn’t care.

Odin is dead. Long live Thor. At least, I hope. After everything he’s been through, he deserves more breaks like this. Long live the Marvel movies, if they keep being this lively.

Thor: The Dark World (2013)

Director: Alan Taylor

Cast: Chris Hemsworth, Natalie Portman, Tom Hiddleston, Christopher Eccleston

Have I Seen it Before: Tragically, it has been the most recent film I’ve seen at the drive-in. It is also the MCU movie I have probably re-watched the least.

Did I Like It: And there’s probably a reason that I haven’t watched it all that much.

I’ve always known this movie was at or near the bottom of many and my own personal rankings of the Marvel movies. I think it hits me in the opening few seconds. It’s not a moment like Superman IV: The Quest For Peace (1987) where something is truly, deeply wrong with the film and there is no chance of improvement. It is more banal than that. Odin (Anthony Hopkins) opens with a sweeping narration about what the Dark Elves are and why Malekith (Eccleston) has a beef with the Asgardians. Now, if you must open your big visual blockbuster with a VO—and I’m not entirely convinced this one does—you could do a lot worse than Hopkins. But, man, do I already want a nap after all that. The film is packed with this warmed-over fantasy banality that the film can never quite come together fully for me.

It is not completely without it’s charms. The pleasing qualities of the first Thor (2011) and what would become the bonkers fun of its successor Thor: Ragnarok (2017) are here, they’re just in highly rationed amounts. The tragically underused Heimdall (Idris Elba) gets a goodly action sequence or two to call his own, whereas he is appears content to just glower and watch for the rest of the series. The score—by MCU score secret weapon Brian Tyler—is actually one of the best of the whole series. Chris Evans’ cameo is quite a bit of fun.

It isn’t a bad movie, really and truly it is a testament to the MCU that they haven’t made an objectively (your mileage may vary) bad film. Nearly every other much shorter film series has a stinker. It’s just so pointedly obvious that everyone involved here—except for perhaps journeyman filmmaker Alan Taylor—is capable of so much more.

Now, that all having been said, if this review makes you put this film in the “non-essential” category, I don’t know if I would go that far, either. Missing The Dark World will make a large portion of the middle hour of Avengers: Endgame (and some truly enchanting expositioning from the freely wacky Thor) largely incomprehensible, and would rob that far more amvbitious film of some decent emotional beats. If that isn’t a recommendation (if a slightly damning one), then I don’t know what is.

Thor (2011)

Director: Kenneth Branagh

Cast: Chris Hemsworth, Natalie Portman, Tom Hiddleston, Anthony Hopkins

Have I Seen it Before: Less frequently than I had originally thought. Aside from Iron Man (2008) I really have not re-watched much of the Phase One MCU films.

Did I Like It: I think I liked it at the time of the premiere, but in light of far more entertaining uses of the character, I’m not sure it has aged as well as some of the other Phase One-ers.

This film is at odds with itself, or at least my reaction to it is at odds with itself. 

On one hand, it is a highly staged cgi-drowned tale of Kings and their realms. This is probably what caused the powers behind Marvel studios to think of Kenneth Branagh as the director, and what may have drawn the Shakespeare adapter-in-chief to the project. This is a fine, but quickly boring aesthetic on which to base a film. One need look to the more focused—and infinitely more forgettable—sequel, Thor: The Dark World (2013) for how far such stodgy staging will get you.

The other half of the film is even more baffling. Groaning under budget constraints at a time where a shared Marvel universe wasn’t necessarily a guaranteed way to print money, the rest of the film plays out in a nearly abandoned New Mexican town, with a few scant explosions, and one CGI robot thing. A far cry from the epic films we expect from the studio now. This is all to say that half of this film looks cheap. TV cheap. Like Agents of SHIELD during seasons when everyone stopped watching cheap. It’s such an odd relic of an era for these films that seems like it took place a million years ago.

But, the MCU—and more importantly Thor, Odinson continued—and there are charms in the film that allowed the experiment to continue. What it lacks in the traditional whiz-bang blockbuster magic, it more than makes up for in engaging performances. Chris Hemsworth threatened the world with his movie star charms in J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek (2009), and while the goofy comedian behind the manhunk doesn’t come into full bloom until Thor: Ragnarok (2017), we see pieces of the once and future Ghostbuster Secretary Kevin here. Similarly, Natalie Portman sheds the Padme Amidala of it all and—while it’s not exactly heavy lifting in the film—convincingly engages in a screen romance.

i suppose it says something about the Marvel movies that they are supremely watchable in their initial release, but seem quaint as the movies only improve. Imagine a world where Avengers: Endgame (2019) feels quaint. I’m already exhausted.